My Captive Gaze Inside Your Eyes

Fall of 1993 through early 1995 were hazy years. I was being abused daily by my then boyfriend. I met him my freshman year of college and we were eventually engaged to be married. At the time I didn’t realize that he was pulling the obvious signs of an abusive boyfriend. It should have woken me up the first time he punched me. It was fall on campus and we were walking back  to our dorm from the local pizza joint after playing a few games of pinball. It was a beautiful central Michigan fall.  The leaves were yellow and red and gold and I just remember being very happy as we walked back towards our dorm. Al of a sudden, He just hauled off and punched me square in the chest. I dropped to my knees, my breath knocked out of me, in disbelief at what he had just done. That was the first time I should have done something but i didn’t. I guess I wasn’t strong enough.  I also should of woken up about him and our horrific relationship when my dorm mother found us arguing. I was smacking him with our dorm phone just to keep him off of me. The third wake up call that I missed came in the form of my roommate moving out of our dorm room. That should have been huge flashing warning signs but I was completely naive and blind. I felt that I deserved everything that he was giving me. He was my first boyfriend . What did I know. We eventually left the college after  our first year and we stupidly moved into an apartment together down in southern michigan, thankfully closer to my family and to his. We both got jobs and started living life together. I  lost touch with all of my friends. I look back now and realize that was the beginning part of his manipulation of me.  He was trying to get me completely alone and friendless so that I would take the beatings. When we would visit his family, I would try to show them the bruises, but all I would hear was stories of him being tied in the backyard and I realized that the abuse had come from his parents. I had a fantastic nanny job, loved every minute of it and got paid well. THe family was very loving and considered me one of their own. This somewhat state of independance would be gone in a flash very soon. I lost my nanny job because my boss heard him beating me one morning when I was calling in sick. It was a nasty situation. They did give me wonderful letters of recommendation and it was with those that I found my next job, selling vertical blinds. When a friend at my new job, taking vertical blind orders, needed a place to crash because her ‘boyfriend’ kicked her out, I didn’t think anything about inviting her to crash on our couch. I slowly realized what was going on when I would catch the two of them in the middle of the night sleeping together. It was finally the kick in the ass I needed to get out of his life and as far away as forever. Thankfully the landlord knew what had been happening to me so when I wanted to get out of the lease, the landlord didn’t argue at all and we worked out a deal about my name being taken off the lease and thankfully the landlord helping me out with the least was my last string to that man. I was finally able to get rid of him.

After I made him and the new girlfriend move me out of ‘their’ apartment is really when I began to heal and started to spread my wings again.